Wednesday, March 09, 2011

John Yoo & Obama: Pity The Fools

"He's got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge" - Man Out Of Time, Elvis Costello

Look at that oily smile - doesn't it just scream, "Punch Me!"? It's John Yoo, one of the war criminals who provided legal cover for the Bush and Cheney torture regime. But he was just doing his job. When called to duty by the U.S. President you don't have a choice...unless, of course, you've got a better option with Morgan Stanley, Halliburton or Fox News. Poor John never had one of those offers. He was just a lowly Professor of Law at Berkeley when Bush came to call.

Yoo jumped when asked to issue rationals and excuses for executive privileges and gross extensions of presidential authority in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraqi invasion. Oh, and the torture of children. In December 2005, when Yoo debated University of Notre Dame law professor Douglass Cassel,this exchange took place:

Cassel: "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"

Yoo: "No treaty."

Cassel: "Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo..."

Yoo: "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."

What a guy. Nothing else sums up the degeneration of the Obama administration than the continuation of the Bush/Cheney war crimes as illustrated by Yoo's ugly endorsement. With Obama's recent decision to allow military trials to resume at Gitmo - reneging on his promise to close the prison camp - he appears to have made the calculation that progressives have nowhere to go in 2012; they'll stay loyal and remain hopeful that he'll transform the U.S. state of torture and war in his second term when re-election isn't a concern. I pity the fools.

This is how the U.S. is now governed - both parties have collided, they have become one regarding the criminal lengths they will go for "security." Pity the fools.